


Memoriam

by embep



Category: Pocket Monsters: X & Y | Pokemon X & Y Versions
Genre: Gijinka, Nuzlocke Challenge
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2018-08-19 06:24:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 11,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8193581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embep/pseuds/embep
Summary: Everything is as He dictates. The turning of the tides, the rotation of the planet, the leaf trampled brown and spent on the pavement.They named me Manaka because I am right in the middle.Before we begin, let me tell you our story.





	1. Chapter 1

“You think me mad, but let me say that in the end, we are but poor souls. A match flickering dimly in His palm. It is an old metaphor that I am quite taken with. As the flame, we cannot understand His intentions, but He protects us from the wind and rain so we assume He is benevolent. Egotistically so. We chase after our lives, following whispers through narrow corridors of time and space to our foregone conclusions—will we burn out, or will we be snuffed? In the end, we are all helpless before Him.

That is life.

Everything is as He dictates. The turning of the tides, the rotation of the planet, the leaf trampled brown and spent on the pavement.

They named me Manaka because I am right in the middle.

Before we begin, let me tell you our story.


	2. Chapter 2

I was the first, and he the second. Not blessed to my extent, but still a highly competent boy.

They named him Yuki because he came out as white as fresh linen. Names are often imbued with hopes for the future, and it seemed they hoped he would stay that way, quiet and unassuming as a blanket of snow. Untrodden.

It only seemed their wish would come to fruition.

The boy never cried as a baby and remained quiet as sin well into his adolescence. He was a bomb with an electric fuse, waiting to be set off. No one noticed the pigmentation slowly bleeding into him, the soft, wispy hair of infancy replaced by thick, golden coils, porcelain skin offset by a bright red mouth. 

He retained the silence and grew incredibly capable as he matured, but ultimately he lacked the purity they’d hoped for, and was too mistrusting to be unassuming. And he had no one. There were few people to relate to, and far fewer to relate to him. A poor boy, surrounded by a wall of adults. That in itself was a cruelty.

He visited me often, because although I am in the middle, I was still the first and thus the closest to him. He came in his free time, at the end of his day before his sweat could dry or his blood could clot, and he would kneel.

‘O Mother, holy be thy name, grant me the strength to persist, for I know not how much longer I can go on. In your name, Amen.’

But he prayed loudest at night, when the tears would come and he’d cry out in his heart of hearts, ‘God, please, save me from this hell.’

The boy prays for salvation, even as he knows none can be saved from God’s will.

He fulfilled his destiny at fourteen, when his tired soul finally gave out. A bit of a one-trick-pony, but what he did he was good at. A Tesla of their own creation, and the blue bolts shot out of him like a child’s grasping hands, finding purchase on anyone close enough to unwittingly lend it. He didn’t crackle or split the air but buzzed, almost lyrically, a lost hymn that stretched to fill the room. An oppressive sound to those who couldn’t hear past it, and in the time it took for them to cover their ears, two of them were overwhelmed. 

The rest were squirreled out in an instant, and the survivors came to me.

Help, they said, please help us.

And this I could do.


	3. Chapter 3

Yuki was a failed product, and with Mizuki’s name was the wish that she not share his fate. It must have been the isolation that drove him mad, they said, so they endeavored to make a twin for her. But lack of human resources leant to a feeble body, and by the time Sayuri was strong enough to meet the world Mizuki had already developed bad habits. A toxic personality, they ascribed, but she was yet ten and Sayuri seven, and there was time for both of them still.

The younger of the two and still all too frail, Sayuri made an easy target for the increasingly bitter Mizuki. Her childhood was countless days in the infirmary, with anything from incriminatingly quick-set illnesses to broken bones. They set Mizuki aside, brushed the flaxen locks from the chub of her face, and asked her _why_. They were to be sisters.

But they were not.

Neither of them came to pray at my feet as Yuki had, that precious boy. Mizuki detested the thought, and Sayuri was far too busy trying to please her. One’s indolence fed on the other’s enabling personality, and Mizuki’s toxicity grew as she did. At the same time, Sayuri’s tiny body grew smooth and lithe, her awkward cocoon of silken bandages traded for wings of lace and a captivating beauty that flittered far out of Mizuki’s grasp.

So Mizuki grew green, too, and then purple, short and landlocked and vile. The world was not fair to her, and she would treat it likewise. Nothing was a test but instead a punishment, and so strong was her will to sin that little Sayuri got caught up in it just as they always feared she would.

Beauty that might have been a blessing was weaponized. She was far, far too young, but there were shamefully few of them who could say no when her blue eyes glittered and offered recompense for any kindness they could send her way. She barely had time to vocalize her desires before they had brought them to her.

The world truly is unfair, but it is unfair to everyone equally. After a long day, they both spilled the same blood, and Sayuri was always the more fragile of the two.

And it was such that they became young women. Neither quite pulled their weight properly as Yuki had, but were heralded as successes despite their sloth. They might have put more pressure on them, but they did not want to risk total destruction. If less pressure kept them sane, then so be it.

Sayuri was the first of us to give natural birth. A cause for celebration, for they feared the implications should we be incapable, and with consideration for her lifestyle they began trying to piece together why it had taken her so long. Late maturation, some posited, or perhaps she just had not been lucky. Maybe there was something wrong with her uterine lining, but testing would be too much of a risk without devoted machinery. More likely, and what they eventually settled on, was the absence of Mizuki, who had most unfortunately been greeted by the inner reaches of herself and forced into a coma to heal the damage.

She did not awaken until the twins were more than a year old. Aya and Aoi. The first with names imbued not with hope, but on a mother’s whim.

As I held them in my arms, I wondered for the first time what I would be to these children, if not their mother.

They were an unexpected joy just as they were an unexpected obstacle.

They could not have anticipated the way maternity and time away from Mizuki would change Sayuri, let alone how her newfound strength would influence the greatly-atrophied Mizuki.

Sayuri was overprotective. It was impossible to hide Aya and Aoi from the pain of the world, but she did all that was within her power to lessen it. When Mizuki woke, she distanced herself. She no longer needed the approval she had sought before, and she disallowed something so toxic contact with her children. They could no longer meet.

It is easy to take another’s company for granted, otherwise separation would not be as painful as it is. Likewise, Mizuki had also grown incapable of bearing life’s hardships by herself, and it was thus that she came to Sayuri’s side, pride leaking from her as she begged.

‘Please don’t leave me alone. I won’t touch you or them again, I swear.’

Sayuri’s eyes had glistened hard as sapphires, smile no longer soft enough to cut through them.

‘I’ll do anything, just don’t leave me alone.’

The two made their escape on the eve of the twins’ second birthday. Sayuri had fought valiantly to stop the procedures, but it was no longer possible to stave their grasping hands. She allowed herself to think that life on the outside would be easier.

Had they left the the children behind, they might have been allowed to leave.

As it was, they brought the ceiling down along with Sayuri. A smaller target, trickier, but lace tears so easily. Even as she laid on the ground, pinned by stone and strength fleeing in thick rivulets to paint the rubble, she held Aoi up to Mizuki.

‘Take him and go.’

Lying is a sin, but Mizuki had always been a sinner. She set Aya down and crowded the two children behind her. Limited mobility meant less than nothing; this was just another bump in a road full of blows she had been forced to brunt for Sayuri. Vileness burbled up from her core and shot at all that dared approach, less effective than it would have been in close quarters, but fatal nonetheless. As the sludgy masses turned gaseous and ate away at their skin, they came to me, and thus I to her.

‘My child,’ I said as I approached. ‘My poor, misguided child. Do not despair, for only I can absolve you of your sins. Sleep now, and be at peace.’

I laid my hand on her shoulder.


	4. Chapter 4

Things change and things stay the same. They both inherited their mother’s wings, but neither were the colorful stained glass hers had been. Aoi’s were a luxurious lattice of white on black, while Aya’s were transparent and crystalline, showing colors only when the light diffracted through them and cast rainbows on the floor.

And, possibly because of their early contact with Mizuki, they were both venomous. Aya more prominently, sharp and laced with it, while Aoi’s was more benign, a powdery anaesthetic light enough to be carried off when the wind picked up. Neither of them had the freedom to allow their personalities to warp as Mizuki’s had, though, so they grew up well enough adjusted, even they did not trust me. I entered their lives right as the operations did, which led to them forming an unfortunate association between them and myself.

They were eight before they met the third child, ‘Kazuo,’ with the hopes that he might calm the storm inside. I always thought it fit him too well.

He was born wide-eyed and ashen, and seeping with enough power that they thought to terminate him immediately. His mind and body were yet too small to contain it, so it burst from him in matter-bending rivulets. They labeled him a failure and prayed for my hand, but I would not give it, for an infant cannot truly sin.

Still, it would not do to have another child grow untouched lest they repeat past mistakes, and there was no one among them who could withstand the constant flux of holy energy that Kazuo generated. Thus, the task fell to me. I was the only one who could hold him in my arms, even as he cried and his power reached out and up to carve pieces from the ceiling, flaying and warping everything it touched. I cradled him and sang until he would quiet, changed him and soothed him and fed him.

He was the first child left to me in the formative years—the first to refer to me not as mother, but as mom.

Bottling his ample gifts came slowly to him, but with the promise that he might someday be allowed to meet the other children should he control them, it came surely. He was a lonely boy, but a goal and a warm touch saw that he was never dangerously so.

He was nine when he met them. Good timing, as the twins were just beginning to develop a bit of independance, and any earlier they would have been inseparable. Aya was always a bit too rowdy, and although Aoi was more supple than his mother he still preferred to rest his body when given the opportunity. This difference had developed into a series of minor tiffs by that time, and there was usually an hour or two in which they were not together on any given day. It made it easier for Kazuo, almost entirely unsocialized, to seek them out.

It was a slow friendship for a slow boy. A fear that he may lose control of himself led to a need for distance that a pair of eight-year-olds could not understand, and for more than a year Aoi and Aya could only look to him in reverence. He was bigger than them, smarter than them, infinitely mysterious, and in an effort to meet him more they began making pilgrimages to my church for the first time.

Aya never grew quite as close to Kazuo as Aoi did. She did not understand personal space, and the more she entered his the more he pulled away. She paid no mind to it, though, and as a result grew increasingly individualistic. And as she did, her brother invested his time honing the elegance that she never saw fit to bother with. While her hair was a blonde mess, his was dark like his mother, not black but deep violet—Sayuri in the flesh whenever he danced on the winds.

His sister was quite different, knotted and sharp and too pleased with herself in any case to bother grooming as her brother did. She was given permission to go up to the surface as she approached adulthood, and it was such that she grew tawny and even wilder. Whenever a resource was lacking, she was the first to volunteer herself go above and find it, spending hours of her days just basking in the sun.

Problems arose and were suppressed as they aged. With puberty there was a fear that Aoi might turn to his sister, the only female in his age range, and as such the two were separated, the boy given a sexual retardant and monitored more strictly. At the same time, maturation meant the possibility of more miracles, so they carefully set aside as much time for Aya and Kazuo as was in their power. But even when I did as they asked and bid Kazuo leave the church, he spent little time alone with Aya, and nothing ever came of it.

He was attracted to her. Aya was not feminine, but was comely no less for it. She offered herself to him freely, once and only once, and he gently turned her down.

‘I fear I will become unable to control myself.’

He said the same to her brother, too, when they decided to take him off of his medication. Maybe the baby would still come out healthy, they thought, but alas.

Gentle pushes turned to demands as Aya parted from her teenage years. Kazuo’s control was impeccable, and if Aya was anything like her mother she was sturdier than she looked. It did not necessarily have to be Kazuo who fertilized her, but they believed the gift would be strongest in his seed, and so they bid the two together.

And so they did—Aya with a sated curiosity to help soften the sting of the cuts and abrasions, Kazuo an indecisive mix of guilt and relief.

I was the first he approached after, as ever was I. He asked me, ‘Is laying with another a sin if you cannot procreate?’

I could not give him an answer immediately. I told him I would pray on it, but before I had the opportunity he had already been caught in the act. They bumbled in and knelt them at my feet only partially clothed, demanding harsh judgment.

Aoi stared up at me unabashed, face twisted as if in a challenge, while Kazuo seemed only to wish for swift deliverance. I took them in my arms and felt their lives drumming hot through their veins, and I read their thoughts in the tightening of their muscles. I ran my fingers along the fine threads connecting their souls and contemplated how simple it would be to snap them. It might even have been a kindness.

But it was not their time. We had forgiven many sins before this, and this one was not so severe. The two were temporarily disallowed contact with one another, but even that was soon reconsidered as Aya requested artificial insemination later that month. As long as Aoi and Kazuo met their quotas, they were allowed their freedom.

And it was peaceful.

All three were considered successes, in both personality and ability. The only problem lied within Aya, as her ovum refused to react to Kazuo, and even when they tried other fathers the new life barely had time to take root within her before it withered and was flushed from her body. There were no internal problems and her toxins were localized far from the womb, so the only conclusion they could draw was too much physical strain. A painful conclusion, resources being as they were, but the human resource is the most valuable.

As her trips to the surface decreased, Aoi’s increased by an equal amount. He went up with Kazuo, a strong combination, but with little and less brawn between them they were sorely wanting for Aya’s assistance.

She might even have been able to fight off the bear.

Blessed like the rest, it had traded muscles for sensibility, and thus charged at them when they attempted to frighten it off with psychic imagery. A smarter beast would have been appropriately startled—the bear was only enraged. 

They were two mental powerhouses, but Kazuo was the sturdier of the two, so he prepared to brunt the attack as Aoi took to the skies and whipped anesthetics into the wind. Kazuo teased at the lock in his mind, released a bit of the power he kept locked away, and centralized it on the bear as he targeted it with his eyes. The blast halted the bear, flayed some of the flesh from its side, and saw it change trajectory. There was a boulder, and with its monstrous strength it was able to pick it up and hurl it towards Aoi.

It was the same way his mom went, pinned and crushed by stone, life painting the ground.

Losing a loved one is always the greatest test and Kazuo was not prepared.

His focus slipped, and the blessing trapped in his body for so many years released at once. An opportunity for revenge, but at a price, for his reaction was too hasty. Just as the last bits of the bear were disintegrating under the pressure of Kazuo’s attack, Aoi’s voice met his ears, strangled and weak but very much alive. Kazuo turned back, but his thrill turned to horror as his attention and everything else that came with it focused on the poor boy. It was only for an instant, but it was enough.

Aoi made it back underground in Kazuo’s arms, every bit of him in tatters as Kazuo’s anxiety carved long gashes along his back. They could heal any injury so long as the brain was kept intact, but it had been far too long since Aoi had drawn breath. They could heal the body and sustain him in a life-like state, but he would never wake.

Even so, Kazuo was my son, and he believed in miracles. He disallowed anyone from mourning Aoi.

It was such that they came to me. They were squeezed for resources as it was and could not afford to support him.

I went to him while all others slept. His life was donated and his flesh recycled into new pair of infants: Yuuma, that he may be honest and gentle, and Sumiko that she may live unclouded by temptations.


	5. Chapter 5

Aya was sharp. They said Aoi died naturally, but somewhere she had heard tell of Sayuri and Mizuki, and she was suspicious. She stopped coming to the church, stopped coming to see me, and stopped praying even for fear that I might be listening in. She kept her thoughts to herself, bottled up tight, and did her best not to take them out on the children. She and Kazuo both, for neither could help their initial contempt, but children are designed to endear themselves upon others and their resistance did not last long.

Sumiko was an easy child to love—tiny and round and kissed by freckles, she learned to run before she could walk, and took to dashing about every which way in clothes far too big for such a tiny body. Even then, there was little left clothing to spare, and children were given only what we could afford to part with. Her shirt was like a dress on her, so she tied the loose fabric in a knot just below her hips, and everyone took to calling it her tail for the way it fluttered and dragged behind her wherever she went.

Her favorite thing was to dance. Hallways, empty rooms, operating tables. Anything could be a stage so long as she had an audience, her hair spraying out in orange circles while her white cotton tail made waves to the rhythm of her body. She was perhaps a bit hasty, quicker to trust than she had any right to be, but charming all the more for it.

Yuuma was her opposite. He was not a bad child, plenty smart and full of questions, but he lacked Sumiko’s cheerful nature. His appearance only accentuated the difference, hair growing cool and minty and much too fast, always covering his eyes and leaving him tripping over the hems of his own shirt. He lacked her elegance and he lacked her toughness, too, tears and snot smearing his face whenever he would hit the ground.

Aya grew to love him still, but not nearly as much as Kazuo. She did not have the patience to soothe him or answer every ‘why’ that came from his mouth. As such, although Kazuo and Aya both acted equally as parents to the children as they grew older, Yuuma tended to spend more time at the church with Kazuo and I, while Sumiko idled away at the far end of the facility with Aya, where she would practice her dances and control over water. Aya ensured Sumiko grew strong like she was, and Kazuo likewise ensured that Yuuma grew educated.

By all rights, he should have grown into a man as touched by God as his surrogate father, but he was too preoccupied with what he could not have. 

Within the facility is a library of sorts, a screen full of books from a time past. They are almost unintelligible now without myself handy, but with enough practice it is possible to read them, more or less. All of the children here were taught to read, but only as a means to an end. They were taught letters and how they came together to form the words on the page, but anything beyond that was unnecessary.

The only physical book in the vicinity is our Bible, tattered and worn from the ages and all the hands who have thumbed through it, so that is what we would use to teach them. Yuuma found it incredibly boring and voiced his opinions loud enough that one of them eventually got fed up with it.

‘If you do not like it, go practice on something else.’

So he did. They had not anticipated his immediate, riveted fascination with the obsolete lifestyles held within. Whether it be the inventions of convenience or the sensory descriptions of the outside world, he craved the experiences that overwhelmed his imagination and longed for a time when life was more peaceful, and children got to grow up far less acquainted with their insides.

He found his hair got in the way of reading, so he began tying it up to each side after he learned to do so in a book, and to avoid tripping over his clothing he developed a habit of standing on his toes. He was a sickly boy and remained quick to cry no matter his age, but he was mostly cooperative so long as they allowed him time to read, so they let him. And as Kazuo began leaving alone for the surface more, dying his pale skin a shade darker with every trip, Yuuma was, for the most part, left to isolate himself.

Sumiko attempted to reach out to him. Before, the two of them had danced and played together, chased one another through empty halls and under tables. They had gone exploring the rooms kept dark to conserve the electricity, and had snuck off to examine the red gem left behind when one of them passed away of old age. They had grown up together, and as she felt him pulling away she attempted to bring him back. If Aya or Kazuo came back with souvenirs to sort through from the surface, there was a chance he might leave the room, but the bulk of Sumiko’s suggestions to swim or play or spar fell on deaf ears. 

Eventually, she stopped asking.

He read as he stewed and he stewed as he read, discontent growing by the day. He did not understand—was not capable of understanding—how things had come to be as they were. He asked them and he asked me, but none of us could provide an answer that made sense to him, so on my advice he took to praying.

I heard him pray every night for more than a year before he finally snapped, unable to hear the answers I whispered back to him.

It had been quite some time since any of the children had gone mad, so I suppose they had grown somewhat complacent. The signs were there, but none picked up on them.

Unique to him was the gift of instantaneous travel, so they had little warning when he materialized into existence beside them and scrambled their heads until what was above leaked to the floor through their noses. He set his eyes on me, and I spread my arms in welcome, but he did not budge. He would soon disappear if I let him, so I did not wait.

I stepped forward to take him in my arms, and I closed my eyes to my emotions as I plucked him.

He had already gone still in my arms, but I whispered to him all the same. ‘Fear not, little one. I forgive you of your sin. Be free now and find peace in the world beyond this.’

Kazuo watched in horror. Poor, sweet Kazuo. He had watched three of them drop and he thus said that he could understand what I had done, considering the circumstances, but never again did he take comfort in my presence.

If Kazuo was down below, it could only mean that Aya was out above, and she returned just in time to miss the mess. She was greeted by Kazuo and Sumiko in the height of their grief, and although Kazuo attempted to reason with her she ignored it and came straight to me. I remained placid as she stormed past the pews, throwing herself in my face and dripping venom.

‘You killed him,’ she demanded, and I said, ‘I did.’

‘You killed Aoi,’ she continued, and I said, ‘I did.’

‘You killed my mom,’ she said, quieter, and I told her once more, ‘I did.’

In her eyes, I was her enemy, but she dared not lay a hand on me. Through her tears I could hear her rage, and through the fist she kept clenched at her abdomen I could hear everything else.

What happened to Sayuri and Mizuki was a tragedy, and I was not inclined to repeat it. Mizuki might have still been alive if I had only stepped in sooner, so before anyone other than Aya and the life growing within her could get entangled into what would inevitably become an escape, I came to her. Every day was another that her rebellion might spread to another, so I came to her that night as she slept.

As I snuffed her flame, I stoked the one inside her.

Kazuo named the girl Rei. It was what Aya would have wanted.

He moved out of the church.


	6. Chapter 6

Sumiko encountered what they referred to as The Roamers not long after that.

With Rei still struggling to walk and no one else of age but Kazuo, she was allowed to travel to the surface when she was just fifteen—much sooner than they would have otherwise allowed. Unlike those before her, who stuck to the ground and sky, she treated the spring rivers as her playthings. She swam through the fresh snowmelt and explored everything submerged, from cars to sunken boats to houses that had been overrun with no one to manage the flooding.

The house she found them in was only half-underwater, but the other half had caved in, either resulting in or as a result of the roof collapsing. As a result, the only way to enter was by river or by air, and other than the rubble and the grime the house remained largely untouched. The lighting was dingy, filtering in only through the holes in the ceiling, so she might not have noticed the two huddled in the faraway corner had they not asked her what her affiliation was. It was several tense moments before she could convince them she had none and they relaxed enough to introduce themselves.

They called themselves Shiro and Mayu. Meaningless names, but they would take no others.

They were from Shirane, cousins from a defunct tribe of nearly thirty. A strong and proud people, but they did not have their Source as Kosai did, and they lost utterly in a territorial dispute over the Shiroyama hunting grounds. The cousins managed to escape along the Fuji river using Mayu’s incredible swimming skills, but she had suffered an arrow through her side, and with no disinfectants she became horribly ill as the wound began to fester. They had stopped for the night in the house that Sumiko had found them in, but when Mayu had been unable to wake up they found themselves stuck.

They had been surviving on the raw kelp and fish that Shiro harvested from the pool of water covering their exit. It had been more than a week when she found them amidst the smell of decaying flesh, scrawny and putrid and wild. And much too weak to leave on their own, so she carried them out along the raging waters one at a time, then slowly walked them down into our final vestiges of civilization.

They were little more than stray animals when they came in. Clothed and socialized, but lacking humanity. Even so, they were given everything they needed, bathing, grooming, medical attention. They were given vitamin supplements, food, and the option to choose rooms far enough away from the others that, even being the spectacles they were, they managed to have some semblance of privacy. Above all, they were treated with respect, and they were free to assimilate with the others at their own pace.

The one that called himself Shiro found his niche rather easily. Physically the stranger of the two, green-skinned and earthiest when perfectly clean, cloaked in the fragrance of flowers and dry sands, but he was as gentle as a life outside would allow, and seeing the battle at Shiroyama had left him with a distaste for violence. He mourned his losses by craving companionship, and his love of the arts made him fast friends with Sumiko. In exchange for teaching her new songs and dances, she acted as a bridge for them to enter our community. And, later, when the operations began, as emotional support.

The Shirane tribe had been known for their skin. It was a natural weapon, with various characteristics ranging anywhere from poison secretion to flame resistance to calcification depending on the person. Shiro’s was prickly and allowed him to live anywhere with easy access to water and sunlight—convenient on the surface, but he wilted when kept underground for too long.

Mayu’s was less impressive, rough and abrasive, but dry and irritable. Just as Shiro’s skin craved the sun, hers craved the water, and she spent much of her time swimming, aided by a sleek, aerodynamic frame. Malnutrition left her small, and she did her best to cast a long shadow in compensation, showing off her rows of sharp teeth at every opportunity and starting fights wherever she could find them. She targeted Sumiko first, saying that she needed neither help nor pity, but Sumiko would not have been sent to the top alone if she was not fully capable of defending herself, and the fight was over before it started.

It would have been an insult if we were not at least as strong as an unrefined outsider such as yourself.

She did not get the opportunity to pick a fight with Kazuo. Unlike Sumiko, who took to them instantly, Kazuo could stomach neither. They were hedonistic and unapologetic, foreign and pigheaded. Agnostic. Although he understood that we _must_ take the two in, they were an uncivilized people and he found the idea of mixing with them odious. Little he said could sway Sumiko, but he made efforts to keep Rei out of contact with them. When the sound of music drew her to their room anyway, he visited them himself.

‘Stay away from my daughters,’ he told them, and when they responded that it was out of their control, he blew a crater in the stone wall behind them with a glance and suggested they learn to restrain themselves lest he forget to in the future.

They were able to successfully keep Rei away for the larger part of a year, but although she was elegant and refined like her uncle had been, she was born with a rebellious streak as long as her mother’s, and Kazuo’s disapproval only made her friendship with the outsiders all the sweeter to her. By the time she turned five, she was already crowding herself around the newcomers, and Kazuo had little choice but to begrudgingly accept them with the final warning that if they did anything to them, anything at all, it would be the last thing they ever did.

Shiro promised he would never hurt a hair on their heads, and Mayu was wise enough to keep her mouth shut.

It was a lonely time for me, as not one of the five were interested in visiting my church, but things were quiet for a time. The two never got used to the pain and humiliation of the operations like my children learned to, but Mayu endured them more readily. They granted her a second row of teeth and resculpted her muscles to allow better movement underwater. She was gifted webbing between her fingers and blue skin that tore everything she touched, improving her fighting capability while also making both clothing and intimacy impossibilities.

So they strove to make her barbs retractable, resulting in a long series of surgeries, and she was right in the midst of her second one when God saw it fit to test the both of them.

This facility was built deep and sturdy, encased in a thick steel shell, and as you should know nearly impossible to find unless you know of the location. They later hypothesized that the mole had traced the building through the faint pulses of electricity in the earth surrounding it, and it had spent days trying to get in so that it might gorge itself on the energy stored inside.

The mole was large and grotesque, utterly blind, but gifted both physically and electrically, and it found its way around using sound and the electricity it cast off with every movement. Not enough to kill, but certainly enough to stun, and when it broke through the ceiling to land on Mayu, tissue open and raw, along with an avalanche of dirt, she was completely unable to move. She screamed once, short and quiet, but enough to startle it and earn her its teeth. Her muscles and ligaments were not but cotton balls and rubber bands in the wake of incisors that had just torn through a wall of steel. The flesh parted from her easily, but she did not scream a second time, her body stiff and jumping with the electricity being poured into it.

They used this opportunity to leave the room. They were all well-trained in escape and it did not take long for them to sound the alarm once they had. Everyone was to come combat the mole, because it mattered not how many died so long as they stayed alive to recycle the dead.

Sumiko was the first to answer their call, just a few rooms away, and in the midst of having her lungs expanded. She was held together with just a few quick stitches when she arrived, and should not have been in combat that day, but it was unlike her to shy from it.

She slashed at the mole with whips of water that flowed out from her fingers, and were she able to break into her war dance that might have been the end of it, but every small movement reminded her how close she was to coming undone. It was enough that the beast leapt away and off of Mayu, blood dripping thick from the wound. The smell and the pain must have panicked it. As she drew her arm back to strike it again, its shaggy fur stood on end and each follicle was a spool for the lightning that it poured into Sumiko.

She was left smoking on the ground, never to rise again.

The electricity was its life source, though, it was left utterly drained and heaving for breath, turning to replenish itself. By the time Shiro arrived, it had absorbed just enough voltage that it felt comfortable sending another, weaker, zap towards the opening door.

Shiro was built differently, though, staunch and thick and almost entirely healthy. Alterations to his own skin had focused primarily on his nerves and pores, and the perforation they had given him even allowed him to absorb some of the energy being pumped into him, which he chose to invest in recovery. At the speed his cells regenerated, his burns barely had a chance to redden before they were paved over with fresh, green skin.

He was not particularly fast, but he took in a sprint towards the mole, hitting it with his shoulder and digging his bristles into the creature. Sharp claws dug into his back, but the teeth could not reach him and he continued to suck life from the fine sparks of electricity that flowed through its fur. It was only a matter of time before the mole became sluggish and unable to fight back.

But the strength that He tests is never physical.

The next closest, and third through the doors, was Rei, a bundle of bloodied bandages and clothing patched with colorful rectangles to hide the holes. If she was like the rest of her family, the lumps on her back would expand into wings in the coming years, but as it was she was entirely harmless. The mole knew this not, and it let out a screeching roar as it ran towards her, heedless of Shiro on its back.

Rei froze in place, wide-eyed, but the mole did not have the strength it had just moments earlier when it had opened the ceiling, and Shiro was able to root his feet to the ground and change the mole’s trajectory so that they both tumbled into a stone counter instead of the girl. Glass beakers shattered and metal tools sounded countertop, joined by the soft sound of gas hissing as the mole heaved itself off of a broken valve.

The mole crackled angrily at his side, and Shiro yelled to Rei, ‘Get out! Go!’ But she would not thaw so easily.

He looked to Mayu, who had been pushed off of the operating table by the commotion and was lying paralyzed on the floor, but she bared her teeth at him and shook her head.

‘The kid first. I can take care of myself,’ she said.

Shiro hesitated, even as he must have known how futile it would have been to try and move her once she had made up her mind. There was little time to spare, though, so he soon dislodged himself from the mole to scoop Rei up and throw her out into the hall. He ordered her to go find Kazuo or me before sealing the door shut behind him.

He was not but two steps away from it when the mole’s sparks finally caught and the lab erupted. His strength became his greatest weakness, the perforation making him more sensitive to pain and facilitating the evaporation of water from his body.

The gas continued to flow into the room and the mole continued to emit electricity even in death, so the explosions continued until I came to put an end to them. I am in the middle, so I walked through the flames and dragged the mole’s carcass out of the room. Shiro smelled more of incense than of meat as I passed by him.

Mayu was the only one that survived, her legs nearly gone but her head and torso had been protected from the brunt of the explosions by the base of the counter. I put out the flames and took her out of the room, too, and they got to work restoring her immediately.

By the time she awoke, there were three new children running about: Hikaru, might he always shine like the sun, and Suzu, so she may grow clear and beautiful.

And Takuya.


	7. Chapter 7

Hikaru was immediately the most spectacular of the three.

Despite being the devotee of their constant ministrations, he remained incredibly kind and pure. He was a spirit of flame, dazzling, with a talent for overcoming every obstacle in his way, so long as they did not have a pretty face. Fire spouted thick from his mouth from the time he was born, and with their help he was able to cloak himself in it at will, leaving him frequently dusted in charcoal that stood out stark against his creamy skin. As a child, he had a habit of squinting against his own brilliance, but his eyes adjusted as he grew tall and strong into his teens.

Suzu was also quite spectacular in her own right, but she was plain by comparison. She was short and stout, with blue eyes and long hair that flowed down her back. As a child, her hair had been mostly brown, but as she grew it lightened considerably, turning a soft shade of blonde with the occasional umber streak. Her gifts were similarly vapid: thick nails and sharper teeth. Her true appeal was in her flexible biology, which allowed her to pick up easily on alterations, through which she could mimic a host of other gifts, such as Hikaru’s control of flames or Mayu’s of water. Ultimately, she was less powerful than either of them, though, so despite her utility she was very much left to her own devices. But it was as she preferred it. She was a highly stable person, but she did not enjoy doing more than she had to and consumed all that she could, and was never able to outgrow her infantile roundness.

Takuya was my ward. For only a brief period of his childhood did he consider himself my son. I have never fought for a child’s affection. I love them all unconditionally, and it is their own responsibility to let me into their hearts. Even so, I do regret not trying harder to gain Takuya’s.

His situation was similar but opposite to Kazuo’s. I was the only one that could care for him, but instead of destruction he was blessed with unconscious protection—a flawless, shimmering barrier of light that shot up whenever anyone approached him. Only I could get through, and as such they entrusted him to me.

He was the single most religiously passionate child, singing praises to the heavens and reviling sin. The verses were his bedtime stories. Before he could read, he had memorized the passages, and before he could speak he would hum the hymns. He thumbed through the old Bible until it fell to pieces, so he began transcribing it in the wall behind me.

Suzu was often the object of his fervor. She was sloth and gluttony rolled up into a single person, and Takyua attacked her faults like they were personal affronts. The children were, for the most part, raised separately—Rei with Kazuo, Suzu with Mayu, Hikaru with them, and Takuya with me—but they all came together for meals. To Takuya, each meeting was an opportunity to remind Suzu of her impertinence towards God. Her behavior was inexcusable, he said, and neither did she attempt to excuse herself for it, dismissing him with a roll of her eyes more often than not. Although mellower by far, she had adopted Mayu’s mannerisms and stubbornness. 

He opened a rift between the children, pushing Suzu away and towards Hikaru on one side, and isolating himself and Rei on the other.

Rei’s case was unusual. She did not have a particularly bad relationship with any of the other children, but neither was it good. Already the oldest of the four, she further secured her place atop their hierarchy when her patched shirt and cocoon of bandages opened into jet black hair and eyes, and elegant midnight blue wings dappled white with stars. She held herself like royalty, her beauty a tempest. Unavoidable. Eyes turned to follow her unconsciously as she walked, and for much of his adolescence Hikaru was painfully aware of her, just one step behind and making a fool of himself at every opportunity. Pity for him, she had her eyes set on another.

She saw him at the church often. Kazuo was not happy that she went, but the ceilings were high, and she was the only one who could teach Takuya to fly once the dusty, rust-colored wings sprouted from his back. She yearned for his attention, but he was the master of barriers, raising one even around his heart. He had no interest in earthly desires, or so he said. Rei, in turn, claimed she could never have interest in an insect like himself, and because neither of them could be honest with themselves or one another, their existences were just as magnetizing to the other as they were painful.

In the end, it was not Rei who brought Takuya out of his shell, but Hikaru.

Although he had been taught by Kazuo how he might lower his shields if he so wished, he had never felt the inclination. They were a gift from God, a constant reminder of His love, and as long as he had God in his heart he did not mind that he remained shut-off from the rest of the world. So too did it serve to protect him from their meddling, and as such he was the only one among us whose body was allowed to develop naturally.

He believed that making changes to himself was an insult to His design, because we are sculpted in His image.

‘You speak of things you cannot comprehend,’ I responded. ‘You are a mere human. How can one such as yourself understand His intentions. I am in the middle, put on this earth to interpret God’s will. His words are mine as mine are His. You need only follow me to gain His favor.’

He waved away my words. He did not go so far as to call me a false prophet to my face, but I could hear the thoughts seething in him. I should have ended it there, but my love for him stayed my hand just as the knowledge that he could not touch me should have stayed his.

Puberty changed him.

It changed all of them, but him most of all, for he was not accustomed to changes in his biology. Hikaru was slightly more aggressive and Suzu became more aware of her womanhood, but Takuya was terrified by the feeling of his body changing. His fear manifested itself in his impassioned sermons, pointing them at every target he could find, but he targeted Suzu most frequently.

She acted aloof as always, but her shrugs were stiffer now, her eyes the slightest bit more watery as she rolled them. Even if Takuya failed to notice, Hikaru did not. When they were younger, he would often attempt to get past Takuya’s defences, sneaking up behind him, ambushing him while he was asleep, pouncing from above and below. By the time they were teenagers, he had given up on physical attacks, using words to deal his blows instead.

He told Takuya, ‘A bed in the church and wings on your back does not make you the Mother.’

He was enraged by the comparison. ‘How dare you,’ he spat, but Hikaru was complacent in his victory and had already turned away, motioning to Suzu to follow. As he walked toward the door, the soft glow of protection around Takuya broke to make way for his fist. Hikaru only had the thought to look behind him before it landed square on his temple, and Hikaru, unsuspecting, crumpled to the ground. It was at that moment that Takuya discovered his purpose—as a holy warrior.

Naturally, his misconceptions of his own strength were thoroughly smashed when the two fought a second time, on equal ground, but the thrill of victory was a religious experience to him, and the loss only motivated him to get stronger yet. Determination blossomed from him in the wake of his defeat, like a maggot opening into a fly.

And once he felt he was strong enough, he came for me.

If he were alone, he might not have had the courage, but as it was Mayu had just recovered her damaged nerves. She and Kazuo had wanted to take control of the facility from us for some time, and a shared goal aligned the three. Kazuo and Mayu were adequately powerful to wipe all of them out, for they were all mere replicas of their original, lacking both his strength and his genius, but as long as I lived they could never be controlled by another.

When Kazuo blew down my door, I was only surprised that Rei was not there, too.

They were overconfident. The Sources on the outside all had weaknesses that could be exploited, and they thus believed me destructible.

A barrier shimmered around me before I could react, and as I walked to the door it followed me. Mayu funneled water in through an opening in the top, and with the wall of energy repelling her I had no way to stop it. As the water passed over my head and distorted the image of my sons, I prayed for strength of spirit, because I knew they would never yield. If this did not work, they had plans to freeze me alive in the sphere, and if that failed too they would have used Kazuo to bring the walls down on me. As long as I was alive, I could be killed, they thought.

I did not allow them time for disappointment.

My wings broke through the barrier as I stretched them, filling the room with blackness and leaving them crying out in shock. Mayu screamed at Kazuo to collapse the ceiling, but he stood locked in place, nothing leaving him but a whispered apology.

‘My children,’ I said. ‘I am sorry it has come to this.’

Mayu fell in an instant. She tried to tear away as she felt my hand on her, but it was too little too late.

Takuya, too, attempted to protect himself, encasing himself in a shell and ordering me back, but it shattered just as easily as the last and I took him and Kazuo into my arms. I considered letting them live in that moment. It would have been simple, as I had already forgiven them in my heart, but I knew that they were past the threshold of second chances, so I simply kissed them both on the forehead and let myself feel their warmth one last time.

Kazuo only stiffened as he felt his brother go limp at his side. I said to him, ‘You have always wished for this moment, have you not?’ He did not respond and there was no more need for words, but I continued anyway. ‘You are not to blame for Aoi, or any of the other deaths you shoulder.’

‘Who is, then?’ he asked me, but his eyes blazed the answer he had come to, and I found I could neither respond or look away.

I watched the fire leave them.


	8. Chapter 8

I decided that we would tell the remaining three the truth of what happened that night—that Takuya, Kazuo, and Mayu had committed the unforgivable sin of trying to kill The Mother, and they were judged accordingly. Hikaru was furious, and he raged until he began to melt the metals lining the walls of his room, but he was not angry at me so much as he was himself for being unable to prevent the tragedy. He had been sculpted by them, with a strong set of principles, and even in the end he never abandoned me.

Suzu and Rei were not quite so understanding. Suzu allowed herself to be influenced by Hikaru’s opinions, so she never got to the point of vilifying me, but Rei sympathized with Takuya and became the new face of revolt. Although Hikaru was unwilling to turn against me and Suzu was smart enough not to attempt it, Rei was charismatic, and she was able to convince the others to avoid the section of the institute which I inhabited altogether. I was dangerous and looking for a reason to wipe them all out and start fresh, she said.

Were that what I wanted, I would not need to wait for an excuse. 

Because of their distance, they did not meet the new children for some time. From the three came four infants, and I took them all under my wing. It was unconventional, but who would deny me? In my solitude, I decided I would be the one to raise them, to name them, and to nurture them. They were to be my children in the literal sense.

Megumi, Ren, Noa, and Aiji, all named on the same prayer—that they should feel my love where their brothers had been unable. I surrounded myself in the mundane joys of parenting, taking solace whenever I had to pull a loose tooth or wipe a runny nose, and slowly my misery began to heal itself. I loved them all equally and infinitely. I loved Aiji, tall and voracious, dark-skinned and light-haired, with a nasty habit of chewing everything he could get his teeth around. I loved Ren, who would prance about my heels and knock his head about until a lattice of bones parted his mousy hair. I loved Megumi despite her cheek, with her thick cords of sea-colored hair and stormy red eyes, and I loved Noa, smooth and pink and all too sweet. She liked to jump into my arms and kiss my eyelids, and there was hardly a moment I was not holding her. Megumi and Noa both picked up Mayu’s watery attributes, but the gift of her skin was lost with her death. 

Similar as they were, the girls could hardly tolerate one another. Noa was soft and demure, but Megumi was as rough around the edges as the boys were, and lacked the capacity for gentleness that they had. Around Noa, they would curb their behavior, lower their volume, and took joy in spoiling her just for the smile it would bring to her face. The two were head over heals in a way that none of them would fully understand for some time. It frustrated Megumi, both for the fact that they treated Noa so differently than they did her, and for the fact that she couldn’t feel the same about her sister as they did.

They were wholesome children, but they fought over the smallest of things, as children do. The strength of one’s arm, the black feathers that fell from my wings, whose turn it was to do chores… Their biggest fight was over a length of brightly-colored string, which each of them wanted to use to sew their name onto their clothes. For the greater part of a day, none of the children would talk to each other, until Megumi finally took the initiative to snap the string into four pieces for them to share. This resulted in a shouting match, which finally ended when Ren realized that the sections of string were still long enough that they could each spell out the first letter of their names. In the next moment, they had said their apologies and were huddled up together learning how to use a needle.

To this day, I find their capacity for forgiveness inspiring. They were exceptionally easy children to be proud of.

And, for a time, they were allowed a childhood.

The threat of the operations dangled over their heads, but until adolescence they were able to live without experiencing the pain. The only exception was Ren, whose horns came in a bit too early. He had his veins remapped to avoid severing a cranial artery, but it was not so invasive a procedure.

I would have preferred them to live their lives naturally, but the world no longer allows such luxuries. I had no choice but to bend to His will, and to theirs. Even so, the transition was too drastic.

In the spring of their thirteenth year, the four were introduced to the cold steel of the operating table, but too much time had been lost. Their individual blessings were tested and expanded upon desperately. Plans more than ten years in the making were carried out with such furious intensity that none of the children were able to use their voices for the greater part of the year, so strained were their throats from the screams. They only took pause when their resources grew dangerously low, and they would send every available hand up to the surface to gather whatever organic matter they could find.

Within the course of a year, Ren’s muscle mass was tripled, his horns reinforced and given the same nervous perforation they had practiced with Shiro, allowing him to absorb raw energy through them. Aiji’s strength lied in his jaw, so they worked to elongate and sharpen his teeth while hardening his skin, leaving him cold and craggy and robbing him of his sense of touch, but no longer did he have to worry about physical blows to his body. Megumi and Noa’s lungs were expanded, and artificial organs to store water were inserted into their bodies and connected to their nervous systems. They streamlined Noa’s physique, sculpted her musculature to allow for easier travel through the water, while they drew out Megumi’s natural toxins and added more to her repertoire.

They were afraid of the girls. Noa was akin to Sayuri, all too alluring—a complication just waiting to happen. Although Megumi was not nearly so similar to Mizuki, there were enough parallels that they made an effort to separate the two. Their schedules were lined up so that Noa spent a majority of her time with me, and Megumi spent hers with her brothers.

At the time, it seemed only natural to put Megumi with the boys, as she was always the closest to them, but I regret not requesting the configuration reversed. Ren and Aiji were both in too much pain to comfort Megumi or anyone else, but perhaps they would have put in a greater effort were Noa placed with them instead. As it was, Megumi was surrounded by her brothers but isolated all the same, and it was such that we lost her in her fifteenth year, when it became too much to weather on her own. She did not lash out, but simply disappeared between surgeries, only to be found hidden in a closet days later, her own venom mixed cold and dead in her blood.

It was her death that finally caught the attention of the previous generation. Hikaru was the first to take action, because his grudge was the weakest and his sense of duty the strongest. He had never been very good with his words, but with them he did what I could not, convincing them to give the children a rest in the wake of their sister’s death. Suzu came to meet them the next day, when it became clear that I would not interfere, and she made her introductions together with Hikaru. They had seen the children before, but it was the first time they had spoken.

Rei would not go to meet them. She was stubborn and angry, and she might never have gotten to know them had she not been the one to spot Aiji. He had climbed up the ladder to the outside and would have shattered himself on the stone floor had Rei not been there to snatch him from the air. And just like that, she became his lifeline, as Suzu and Hikaru were to Ren, and I to Noa, who was slower to trust newcomers than her brothers.

Until then, I had sheltered them. It was with the birth of Masao that the last of their innocence was drained, and the knowledge of their own births left their hearts painfully adult. Monitoring the three became of the utmost importance, as they began to question for the first time a life that they had taken for granted. I thought that Noa would take the truth the hardest, but Ren had always been surprisingly sensitive. He cried for days that his life meant the loss of someone else’s, and he became absorbed in the stories Suzu told of those who came before him.

I took Masao for my own as I had the other children. It was just as well, as Noa was the only child compassionate enough not to act cruelly towards him. He came out as blue as Megumi, and that was all that they could see in him, despite his jutting bones and sloping forehead. He was never entirely bright, but thick-skinned and tough, sturdy on his feet and nearly impossible to knock over. He lived up to his name, honest and innocent, and was a very sweet boy.

He was my son and I loved him, and Noa, who always had too much love to spare, eventually became able to do so as well. Ren and Aiji left the church to live among the others soon after he was born, and they took to avoiding him. They believed that I had betrayed them, but not so much as I had Megumi’s memory.

And in the height of this, Ren and Aiji were allowed to travel to the surface. I hoped that they might realize the necessity of all I’d done for them, but Rei was their guide, and one trip was all it took for my children to begin to fear me almost as much as they did the creatures roaming above.

They did their best to minimize both their time with me and their time on the surface, but as their alterations took and Suzu’s belly began to swell it became impossible to avoid going up. Even more so, too, as Suzu continued to grow larger and larger, until it became clear that what they had thought were twins would be born triplets. For the first time since the fall, the human population threatened to reach into the double digits, and the frequency of runs to the surface was increased in preparation. 

Ren bemoaned his fate and Noa begged and clung to me, but neither were spared until Aiji stepped up, huge and stolid, and asked that he be let go in place of his siblings.

‘At least I won’t get hurt,’ he told them when they protested, his grin toothy and harsh.

And they acquiesced, on the condition that he be paired with Rei. She was strong—reliable, angry, and tired of the people she loved disappearing. Most importantly, despite the resentment he harbored towards me, his filial piety was too much to ever turn against me entirely. He was never the type for trickery or vengeance.

Aiji would charge into battle mouth-first and Rei would provide support from behind. She lacked Kazuo’s raw mental power, but she could push and pull, diverting incoming blows and allowing him to go in for a swift kill. They were a fantastic team, and as the months turned to years they suffered so few injuries that not even Hikaru, who remained attentive of Rei even with Suzu to take care of, could think to worry anymore.

That is, until the day they failed to return.


	9. Chapter 9

It was as if they simply ceased to be. 

Even I was shaken, for I had no explanation. I reasoned that they had found their end, but Hikaru had been bewitched by Rei from childhood, and as a result he refused to believe she could have died without evidence. He went up to the surface countless times with hopes of finding them, but as the weeks turned into months and he found no definitive proof in either direction, even he began to mourn. Nonetheless, there was never a trip to the surface afterward in which he was not present.

Ren would neither accept my explanation. In his grief, he blamed me, that I had wanted to silence Rei, who had always been the most outspoken against me. He went so far as to try and threaten the truth from me, lowering his head to charge, but I stopped him with a touch and laid him flat on the ground, whereupon I left the room. He could never stand to cry in front of others. 

In time, I think he might have forgiven me.

He and Noa both came to me after they received the news, but Noa was his opposite. She crowded me and pressed her face into my feathers as she tried to chase away her tears, but she let her sadness spill from her as soon as I cupped her cheek in my hand.

She looked to me and said, ‘Will you promise me that you will never die?’

‘I will not die,’ I promised, and I told myself that I would not allow another one of my children such a needless death. They would henceforth be forbidden from breaching the surface, and I would go in their place.

Until then, I had not allowed myself to leave my flock, for fear of the wolves that might descend upon it. Leaving is against my teachings, but in the centuries that I have been down here, I thought that perhaps a reinterpretation of my duties was in order. Human life is what is most important, after all. If I could martyr myself to save it, then was it not my responsibility?

While I was away, Suzu gave birth to her triplets—Chiyo, who cried loud enough to rattle walls; Yuu, with his round, black eyes and aqua-tipped wings; and last, malnourished and green, almost small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, came the child that would become my undoing.

Yes, Sena, it was you.


	10. Chapter 10

Your gift allows you to read the lifetimes of others. You can see where actions branch into new futures and choose to deviate from the path He has laid out for us, and you think that has granted you infinite wisdom. But you cannot see into the past. I have told you this so that you might begin to understand the gravity of where you stand. The blood on your hands does not even begin to describe the sacrifices you have undone today.

Even so, I cannot blame you. It is too powerful a gift for one person. I cannot say I would not be tempted to change the course of history, would that I knew the result.

No, I do not blame you for what you did, but neither can I forgive you.

I understand now the duty I have been given. I am the earthly embodiment of God, made only to act according to His will. We have been tasked with the preservation of all the knowledge before the fall. We exist to document the world in its downfall and, eventually, mend the broken pieces. He has given Earth a second chance at life. 

By leaving my flock unattended, I have fallen to temptation and endangered all of humanity as a result. I know he will forgive me, though, because I am in the middle. There is none else who can act in His name as I do.

You might have been an angel, but you strayed from your path and sought to destroy His carefully-laid plans. So, think me mad and cruel, but know that when I smite you, it is not out of hatred. We are simply atoning for our sins—both of us. You have committed the sin of inviting in those from the outside who covet what we have accomplished. You have ruined their earthly bodies, killed your family, and still you stand proud upon my altar, as if waiting for your punishment.

Well, I’ve said enough. Welcome home, dear.

I hope you have prepared yourself, for I am sure you know what is to come.”


End file.
